The Stewarts of Scotland came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066 and descended from Alan Falhald of Oswestry. Walter, First Lord High Steward of Scotland, was the son of Alan. Sir John Stewart of Bonkyll, who was killed at the battle of Falkirk in 1298, was the son of Lord Alexander Oswestry, Fourth Lord High Steward. Sir John’s brother, Lord James Oswestry, became the Fifth Lord High Steward, and from him descended the House of Stuart, rulers of Scotland and England. William Stewart of Paraguay descended from Sir John of Bonkyll, the twenty-second generation after Alan Falhald. In Scotland the Stewarts were landlords, merchants, bankers and farmers whose fortunes waxed and waned but always seemed to recover. That they were a resourceful clan is a conclusion easily reached if one takes the career of Dr. William Stewart of Paraguay as an example.

Religious education in Brazil can be conveniently divided into four phases or periods:

I. 1553-1759
II. 1759-1891
III. 1891-1931
IV. 1931 to the present.

During this early period religious education in Brazil was, practically speaking, in the hands of the Society of Jesus.

The movement known as the Counter-Reformation attached great importance to cultural formation. Three great personalities of the sixteenth century dominate this intellectual renascence which can rightly be called Catholic humanism. They are St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, in Spain; Thomas More, the excellent Hellenist and sociologist, in England; and St. Angela Merici in Italy, who founded the Congregation of the Ursulines, dedicated especially to the education of women.

Known by various names, this Franciscan Province at one time comprised the territory of all the states in the vast basin of the Rio de la Plata and its great tributaries: the Rio de la Plata and Tucumán colonies (present Argentina), Paraguay, and Uruguay—and in the beginning also the southernmost part of Brazil.

Though it was the last of the Franciscan Provinces to be established in Spanish South America during colonial times, it was founded as the independent Custody of Paraguay-Plata as early as 1538. In 1565 another Custody, that of St. George of Tucumán, was founded by Franciscans of the Peruvian Province (see The Americas, II, 83–90). These two Custodies were united into one in 1575, but separated again into two in 1597, both remaining dependent on the Province in Peru. Fifteen years later, the General Chapter held in Rome on July 12, 1612, once more joined the two Custodies to form the Province of Rio de la Plata.

After the first American doctoral dissertation related to Luso-Brazilian studies was completed in 1892, the output of dissertations in that area of scholarship grew slowly and unsteadily. In contrast, graduate student interest in Luso-Brazilian studies increased greatly during the twenty years after 1950. Students in British universities also contributed an increasing number of studies during the latter period (Table I). Unfortunately, few compilations of this accelerating scholarly production have been available to scholars interested in Luso-Brazilian studies.

Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, the internationally known Chilean poetess who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, was born at Vicuña in the province of Coquimbo on April 6, 1889, the daughter of Gerónimo Godoy, a school teacher and minor poet, and Petronila Alcayaga. When Lucila was only three years of age her father abandoned her mother; yet she apparently remembered him with deep filial affection and did not forget the following verses he had written for her:

As a historian of Mexican history who studies Middle Eastern immigrants to Mexico in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I have approached the topic of ethnic film with both trepidation and great interest. Attuned to the historiography of what and who is Mexican, I view the films El baisano Jalil and Novia que te vea for their representations of ethnic difference and suggestions of a multicultural Mexico. Here, I wish to explore how these films not only show the presence of immigrant groups in the cultural fabric of Mexico, but also how the films demonstrate that public discourses (via film) can enhance scholarly understanding of multiculturalism. My purpose is to make a discrete intervention in Mexican historiography by underscoring the importance of film in conceptualizing the dimensions of ethnic identity. I suggest that these films are rooted in a particular Mexican social context in which both Arab and Jewish immigrants have been able to manipulate the ambiguities of what it means to be Mexican.

Whatever history may record about his personal life, there is no denying that Pope Alexander VI was among the most efficient and far-sighted of the Church’s long list of vicars. Perhaps nowhere is this fact more obvious than in the pontiff’s concern and zeal for the missions. In a decree addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, issued at Rome on May 4, 1493, the pope stated, in part:

With this and subsequent papal mandates, the Spanish monarchs inaugurated the Christianization and colonization of the New World.

In the Rich Collection of the New York Public Library there is a manuscript, Apuntes ligeros sobre los Estados Unidos de la América Septentrional, in which a Spanish diplomat and author, Valentín de Foronda, gives his impressions about the United States of America.

We cannot say with certainty what the history of this manuscript is, but from the few scattered facts which we have we can come to certain conclusions. At the time when it was written, in 1804, there must have been more than one copy. The perfection of the manuscript and the fact that ft is not in Foronda’s handwriting, tends to indicate that it was recopied several times. It is probable that there were at least three sets of copies. The original he must have kept for himself. One, in all likelihood was given to his immediate superior, who at that time was Casa Irujo. A third set might have been sent to the Spanish Minister of State. It is my belief that the manuscript that has come down to us is the one he gave to the Ambassador Casa Irujo. The reason on which I base this, is that twenty years later, long after Foronda and Casa Irujo had died, Mrs. Casa Irujo became a personal friend of Obadiah Rich, the bibliographer, and used to be a frequent guest at his house in Madrid. Rich obtained the manuscript about this time and it is very probable that he got it from her. Where the other hypothetical copies are would be difficult to say. The set sent to the Spanish Minister of State must be buried in some Spanish archive. The other one which he kept for himself was more than likely confiscated by the Spanish authorities, along with his other papers, and was probably destroyed during Foronda’s trial of 1814.

The Commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of the death of Juan de Zumárraga signifies more than the pious recollection of the contributions to New World culture of this great Franciscan, great Spaniard and great American. For the study and contemplation of his works plunges us once again into the heat and conflict of the Spanish conquest of America, even though Columbus first landed over four hundred and fifty years ago. No one who attempts to study and to interpret this extraordinary event can ignore the life of Zumárraga, nor can he fail to confront the pressing problem which this energetic and able bishop confronted and attempted to solve—how could the Indians be saved?

The New Kingdom of Granada, now Colombia, was discovered and settled by three unrelated expeditions organized for different purposes. Two of them were led by Spaniards and one by a German. The first was placed under the leadership of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada by the governor of Santa Marta, and ordered to go south in search of a passage to Peru. Another was led from the south and out of Peru by Sebastián de Benalcázar in search of one Dorado or golden man, who was supposed to reign in the Indian area of Cundirumarca, while the third was organized by Nikolaus Federmann in the province of Venezuela, with the aim of reaching the Xerira land of riches, the existence of which was known from the Indians encountered in early explorations. He was to proceed under the auspices of the German House of Welser, concessionary at the time of the exploration and exploitation of the province of Venezuela.

Every year a fair is held in the last days of September at which not only the inhabitants of Saltillo provision themselves for the entire year, but also those of the Kingdom of Nuevo León, Coahuila, Texas, and a great part of the colony of Santander as well. They come to sell wool, deer skins, salt, mules, and some other products that those places produce, and return with clothes, tanned hides, soap, saddles, and a variety of foodstuffs that come from Michoacán and Nueva Galicia, such as rice, sugar, chickpeas, and other commodities harvested in those lands. As a result, Saltillo has become a sort of warehouse, where the neighboring provinces provision themselves not only at fair time, but where they come between-times to stock themselves of those articles that they lack, which are considerable because of the impossibility of preserving them in such hot places.